Today, Seek Limited (ASX: SEK) reported its result for the half year to 31 December 2017.
Seek is Australia’s largest job portal and also has stakes in job portals overseas, such as Zhaopin in China.
Here are some of the highlights compared to last year:
- Revenue increased by 26% to $196.7 million
- Operating earnings, or EBITDA, increased 20% to $221.2 million (What the heck is EBITDA?)
- Underlying profit slightly up to $103 million
- Reported profit up 21% to $102 million
- Dividend up 4% to 24 cents
The job portal company pointed to its strong growth of 15% in Australia & New Zealand to justify its continuing re-investing into the ANZ business. The company boasted that there are more than 35 million monthly visits, around 185,000 monthly paid job ads and over 150,000 hirer relationships.
Seek CEO Andrew Bassat said “The success of our ANZ’s business model evolution provides a strategic roadmap for our international business… The business fundamentals are strong and we are delivering significantly more value to candidates and hirers which is ultimately translating into record levels of free cash flow.”
Mr Bassat commented on the strong Chinese growth “Seek International delivered a creditable result against a backdrop of aggressive investment and weak macro conditions”.
Outlook
Seek management said that revenue growth would be in the range of 20% to 25% for FY18. It upgraded EBITDA guidance to 14% to 15% and confirmed that profit would be at the upper end of its previous guidance of $225 million to $230 million before its investments in growth of early stage options.
Mr Bassat concluded “Seek has very exciting growth prospects across the broader human capital management industry. We are uniquely positioned to capitalise on our growth opportunities given our deep relationships with candidates and hirers and significant data assets.”
We are confident that if we invest appropriately to build or acquire the right solutions this will lead to strong returns for our long term shareholders. – Bassat
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